1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to managing a model of a product structure for a product and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for using the model to manage and present information about variations in the product structure for the product.
2. Background
A product may be any item that has been produced by labor or effort or any item that results from an act or process. Oftentimes, different variants of a product may be designed and produced. Variants of a product may differ in one or more properties with respect to the design for the product. Oftentimes, computer software, such as, for example, computer-aided design (CAD) programs, may be used to manage the designs of products. For example, computer-aided design models may be used to manage the designs of complex products. A complex product may comprise, for example, without limitation, thousands to millions of components.
As the number of components that make up a product increases, managing the different possible variations in the design for that product may become more difficult. In particular, managing the different variations in the design for a complex product may take more time, effort, resources, and/or processing power than desired.
For example, with some currently available computer-aided design programs for modeling the design of a product, adding a variation to the design of a complex product in a model may require adding redundant data to the model for the design of the complex product. For example, capturing a modification to the design of the complex product in the model may require copying and/or duplicating more data than just the data associated with the modification.
This type of redundancy of data within the model may increase the amount of time, effort, and cost needed to manage the model relative to a desired amount of time, effort, and cost, respectively. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above as well as possibly other issues.